“Three decades after a top climate scientist warned Congress of the dangers of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising and so do global temperatures.” We are “going nowhere fast on climate, year after year.”

“Global warming is a Midwest crisis in the making.” A just released federal climate change report predicts “sopping rains will damage crops, then heat waves will fry them. Humid conditions will spur the growth of pests and pathogens that will degrade the quality of stored corn or soybeans. Before mid-century… Midwest agricultural productivity will slip back to levels of the 1980s.”

“Worldwide, insect pests consume up to 20 percent of the plants that humans grow for food, and that amount will increase as global warming makes bugs hungrier…. That could encourage farmers to use more pesticides, which could cause further environmental harm.”

“Earth is smouldering. From Seattle to Siberia this summer, flames have consumed swathes of the northern hemisphere.” And humanity is not rising to the challenge. Three years following the Paris Accord, “greenhouse-gas emissions are up again. So are investments in oil and gas. In 2017, for the first time in four years, demand for coal rose. Subsidies for renewables, such as wind and solar power, are dwindling.” While “it is tempting to think these are temporary setbacks and that mankind, with its instinct for self-preservation, will muddle through to a victory over global warming. In fact, it is losing the war.”

“No consequence of global warming is as self-evident as higher temperatures. Earth is roughly 1°C hotter today than it was before humanity started belching greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution.” This summer the consequences are widespread: “Heat is causing problems across the world.” But if global warming continues, “the toll on human lives is hard to imagine.” The bright spot is that better government response appears to be saving some lives. “If only the world could take in a similar lesson about the importance of stopping climate change in the first place.”

“Climate change didn’t cause Harvey, but it almost surely made the storm worse.” And extreme weather “isn’t just happening in North America. Even as Harvey riveted the nation’s attention this week, the death toll topped 1,000 from unusually severe monsoonal rains half a world away in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.” With such destruction creating “a torrent of human misery, the question isn’t whether the nation can afford to get serious about global warming. We can’t afford not to.”

“Coffee production in Ethiopia, the birthplace of the high quality Arabica coffee bean and Africa’s largest exporter, could be in serious jeopardy over the next century unless action is taken.” According to a study by Kew Gardens, “current coffee growing areas in Ethiopia could decrease by up to 60% given a temperature rise of 4C by the end of the century.”

“It was about 37 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the Arctic in November than it usually is this time of year. The week before Christmas, it was 50 degrees above the usual average. That is, to put it mildly, something quite out of the ordinary.” Even more troubling, “what every scientist in the world studying the Arctic knows is this: what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; and global warming is now permanently altering the region in ways that will have untold consequences. In fact, the Arctic system has changed so dramatically that it may now be vulnerable to tipping points that affect the entire planet.”

“Global temperatures in February were the most above average since weather record keeping began nearly 150 years ago, bringing the world the closest it has ever been to what scientists consider dangerous levels of warming.” As if that’s not enough bad news, “climate scientists have already predicted that 2016 will trump last year as the warmest on record.”

“On climate change, curb your enthusiasm. It’s not that the recent international conference in Paris didn’t take significant steps to check global warming. It did. Nearly 200 countries committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from preindustrial times was reaffirmed. The trouble is that what’s being attempted is so fundamentally difficult that even these measures may be wildly unequal to the task.”